


The Undesirables

by rooonil_waazlib



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, HP: EWE, Multi, Post - Deathly Hallows, Post-Hogwarts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-08-09
Updated: 2014-01-18
Packaged: 2017-12-22 21:12:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 8,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/918073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rooonil_waazlib/pseuds/rooonil_waazlib
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Light side has won the Battle for Hogwarts. But it’s just the beginning of the War; although Voldemort is now dead, the Dark still holds power over the Ministry. Dolores Jane Umbridge has staged a coup of the Ministry, holds power as Minister for Magic, and wages war against those of lesser blood status. The Order of the Phoenix has coalesced with Dumbledore’s Army into one resistance movement, which runs not only many of the acts of rebellion occurring in Britain, but also a school for Muggleborns, who are no longer allowed to attend Hogwarts. The members of this new faction of Dumbledore’s Army are, however, the most wanted people in the United Kingdom, and many have been in hiding for more than two years, thus falling out of contact with the movement.</p>
<p>But the time has come to put an end to the madness. The Light is now preparing to overcome the Dark.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Anybody that you recognize belongs to JK Rowling. Any characters that you do not recognize belong to me. The words are mine.
> 
> If you care to, I have made a series of wanted posters corresponding to this series. You can find them [here](http://rooonil-waazlib.tumblr.com/tagged/undesirables) at my Tumblr.
> 
> Many thanks to those who have read this for me in preparation of its posting. That means you, Laura, and you, Fiona. <3 You guys are spectacular!

Leaning back in his chair, Harry glances toward the window to be sure it’s open before tapping his wand upon the edge of the table. He lights his cigarette with the tiny flame glowing at the tip before holding his wand out to the end of Ron’s cigarette, and takes a drag, the two of them spitting twin columns of smoke up toward the ceiling. Hermione ignores them, too busy hunched over her shattered Sneakoscope to light up with them.

The men watch as she gently taps the sparkling glass shards with the tip of her wand, which meld together into a half-globe. Frown lines etched into her forehead, she holds the little cup against its other half, which is still attached to the slowly-spinning rings that would move faster in the event of an attack. She draws a line all the way around the two half-globes, which become one behind the trail of her wand, and after a few moments she straightens up, setting the Sneakoscope down on the table and watching as it spins, perfectly balanced.

“Nice,” Ron says, running the outside of his index finger down his girlfriend’s arm. “Thanks for fixing it.”

“It would be better if you didn’t break it in the first place,” she replies, but both Ron and Harry can see the little smile that’s pulling on one corner of her mouth. She’s never been that good at dismissing praise.

Harry sucks on his cigarette and reaches for the little radio at the far end of the table. “And you’re sure you can’t make this give us British radio?” he asks.

Sighing, Hermione takes the radio from him. “I don’t think so.” She twiddles one of the knobs, and the radio squeals before breaking into static again. “I just don’t think it’s got a big enough antenna to pick up the British signals.”

“Can we replace the antenna for a longer one?”

She shrugs and runs one hand through her wild hair. “I doubt it.” Putting down the radio, she shakes her head, slumping back in her chair and propping one foot against Ron’s knee. “I think we’re just going to have to bite the bullet and actually communicate with someone back home.”

“How?” Ron asks. “Everyone in Britain is being watched. If we were there, it might be easier, but none of us can risk that. We’re the three most wanted people in the country. I bet Umbridge would personally show up to arrest us.”

Harry tsks and blows smoke directly into his friend’s face. “That’s _Minister_ Umbridge, Ron,” he says, putting on a high, false voice. “Or it’s detention for you!” Ron snorts and puffs smoke back.

It’s been two years since the Battle for Hogwarts and nine months since the three of them had left Britain. It’s easier to hide outside of the country than within it. Harry still has nightmares about that grotesque little bat-thing at the King’s Cross platform he’d stopped at when he died. Voldemort might be dead, but the War is far from over. Dolores Umbridge had, while the rest of Wizarding England was focussed on the Battle, staged a coup of the Ministry.

As Minister for Magic, she had written into law several anti-Muggle legislations. What Muggleborns had integrated into the Wizarding community were forced to flee; none were now offered entry into Hogwarts. She had not implemented a kill-at-will policy upon any Muggle, but the Death Eaters—who now made up the majority of the Auror force—did so anyway. The majority of the Death Eaters’ time, however, was now spent on squashing any resistance from the people, many of whom could no longer close their eyes to the blatant discrimination occurring on a daily basis.

*

Harry stubs out his cigarette, eyes marking out the lights of New Jersey outside the kitchen window. It’s not that he dislikes New York City, really. But he wishes he could go home without wearing a Glamour, looking over his shoulder at every other moment for the Death Eaters he knows will be tailing him the moment they notice his magical signature back in the Isles. “We can’t be the only ones who’ve left the country,” he mutters.

“Even if we weren’t, we don’t know who it might be or where they might have gone,” Hermione says. The outer half of her right eyebrow, which she rubs when she’s nervous, has gone quite narrow indeed. “We’ve got no way of finding that out, either. We can’t send owls; we certainly can’t Floo. Maybe Seamus or Dean has figured out how to use a computer or a telephone by now, but—the amount of work it would take to find them that way…”

“What if we have?”

Hermione looks up at Ron, the frown lines back like slashes across her forehead. “Have what?”

Crushing his smoke, Ron waves one hand around. His blue eyes glance from his girlfriend to Harry and back. “I just—we did have one way to communicate that that toad-whore never noticed,” he says. “Those coins.”

“Coins?” Hermione looks bewildered, her hair sticking up in odd directions, the dark smudges under her eyes indicating just how late it is, but Harry knows exactly what Ron means.

“ _Yes_ ,” he says, the front legs of his chair thumping back to the floor as he sits up straight. “Neville said that they used them to communicate with the DA when Snape was Headmaster at Hogwarts.” He grins at Ron, who grins right back, thrilled that, for once, one of them has thought of something that Hermione has not.

“That was two years ago.” Hermione sounds exhausted. “And I—I’m not sure where my coin is. How do we know that Neville—or Ginny, or Luna, or Seamus or Dean or, or _anyone_ —hasn’t lost theirs too? Or spent it, for that matter?”

But while she sinks even lower in her seat, Harry leans forward. “I bet they’ve all still got them,” he says. “And even if they haven’t—so what? How dangerous could it really be? If no one knows those coins are special, they won’t notice when it changes.”

“We could broadcast a message to meet us somewhere outside of Britain on a certain day.” Ron grabs Hermione’s arm, shaking her a bit in his excitement. “Then we can Glamour ourselves, and hide out and wait. Ooh, I’ll bet you _anything_ it’s Neville who shows up.”

“I’d put a Galleon on all three of them—Ginny, Neville, _and_ Luna,” Harry replies. The boys shake on it. “Hermione? D’you want to place a bet?”

She frowns at him. “The two of you are forgetting one vital detail,” she snaps. “I don’t know where my coin is. And if I don’t, I can’t imagine that either of you know where yours are, either.”

Harry allows his smile to fade. She has a point. “You’re right, of course, Hermione. I don’t know where mine is. Ron?”

“No idea,” Ron says, but he’s still smiling. He sticks his wand in the air. “ _Accio_ enchanted coin!”

When he gets beaned in the head by three large coins flying at breakneck speed, he stops smiling, but Harry and Hermione fall about laughing. “Smooth,” Harry chokes out as Ron comes up from under the table holding the coins. “But at least we’ve still got them.”

As he reaches for the coins, Hermione reaches out too, stilling his hand. “Look—let’s wait until tomorrow. It’s the middle of the night in Europe, and we’ve got to figure out when and where we want to meet them. And I don’t think I have the energy to cast a Protean Charm tonight.”

“I could do it,” Harry offers, but Ron and Hermione are already getting to their feet.

“Not tonight,” Hermione repeats. “I’ll be up at six; we can talk about it then. Goodnight, Harry.”

He watches as they retreat toward their bedroom. “Night,” he calls, and not for the first time in the last nine months, he wishes Ginny were here. He might be seeing her soon—within the week, in fact—and he is suddenly so full of energy that if he tries hard enough, he just might be able to materialise her in front of him.

But he shouldn’t. He should sleep, too. The analog clock hanging above the kitchen doorway reads eleven-thirty-six.

Palming his wand, he uses it to Transfigure his face, flattening his nose, widening his mouth, muting the colour of his eyes and dying his hair blond. Shoving his wand into the pocket of his denims, he pulls a jumper over his head and leaves of the apartment. He needs a drink and another smoke.


	2. Chapter 2

It’s half past one in the morning when Harry notices them. Actually—he had noticed the woman the moment he’d walked in the door—but given that she was with a man, he hadn’t paid them much mind as he made his way over to a seat at the bar, against the wall.

Now, though, the woman is being harassed by a very large, very drunk man who seems to be trying to get her to leave the man she’s with. Her neck is tense as she leans over the bar, but it’s nothing compared to her partner, who is clearly seething. Harry’s sure he recognizes them from somewhere; they’ve both got dark hair and blue eyes, and more than a passing resemblance. They aren’t together, and Harry knows it, although the drunk man doesn’t seem to have noticed.

Just as Harry presses one hand to his thigh, palming his wand through the fabric of his denims, the drunk puts one hand on the woman’s arm. “Come on, sweetheart, look at me!” he drawls, and slowly, ever so slowly, the woman turns her head to look at him.

It would be the understatement of the millennium for this woman’s expression to be described as anything less than icy, and even that, Harry thinks, is probably an understatement. But there are no words for just how this woman looks; she looks calm, but the set of her mouth and something in her eyes makes Harry sink a couple of inches down in his seat. He would not want to be on the receiving end of that look.

Meanwhile, however, the drunk man is swaying ever nearer to the woman. The man that she is with continues to sit beside her, staring into his whiskey neat, but he’s right on the edge, so very close to snapping.

“Take your hand off me,” the woman says, enunciating each word very clearly. Her accent is Highlands Scots, very thick, and Harry narrows his eyes. It’s bewildering, because he knows probably ninety-five percent of the Wizarding population of the United Kingdom, and he can’t place her.

The ogre standing over her leans close, his free hand coming up to gently push a strand of her curly dark hair over her shoulder. “Just one kiss, sweetheart,” he murmurs, “and then you can decide if you’d rather go home with this leprechaun, or me.”

Harry blinks, and very nearly misses it. The woman is on her feet, and the man’s arm is tweaked up and behind his back in less than a second. Yelling, the man bends at the waist in an effort to reduce the pressure on his arm, but this only serves to make him more vulnerable as she kicks his legs out, forcing him to his knees. She puts one foot flat on his back and pushes, leaning forward so that his arm is extended straight up in the air. Her blue high heel sparkles as it catches the candlelight from a nearby table. The man howls.

“First,” she says, her voice low but still audible as the bar has gone mostly silent, “I told you not to touch me.” She twitches her hand, and he yelps, his forehead almost touching the grimy floor. “Second, I’m _Scottish_. Leprechauns are Irish. Scots have brownies, you shite.”

Harry is so busy being entertained by the woman’s conquering of this tall man that he almost misses the bartender picking up the telephone and pressing it to his ear. He doesn’t, however, miss the motion made by the man still sitting in front of his drink, who jerks his left hand in, brushing his sleeve with his last two fingers. Harry knows that motion; he’s seen Ron do it hundreds of times, though he himself prefers to keep his wand in a thigh holster or in his pocket. But it’s obvious what this man has done when the bartender frowns and jiggles the hook on the telephone like it’s gone dead.

“Look, don’t call anyone,” the man says, his own brogue matching the woman’s. He gets to his feet. “We’ll just go.” Pulling some green American notes from his pocket, he counts out several and slides them across the counter before turning to the woman and glancing down at the prostrate man at her feet. “Let’s get out of here. This lad won’t follow us, I’m sure.”

She grins out of one side of her mouth. “I’d like to see him try,” she replies, letting his wrist slip from between her fingers. Walking across his back, she places her hand daintily in her companion’s and the two of them make their way toward the exit. Harry follows, unable to let this moment pass.

By the time he steps out of the bar into the warm night, the pair is halfway down the block in the direction of the nearest Apparition Point, two blocks away. Jogging after them, Harry calls out. They both turn briefly, but as they turn to keep walking, he realizes that he is still disguised. He pauses under a streetlamp, throwing caution to the wind and casting a Finite at his own face. Then, he calls again. “Wait up!”

This time, when the woman turns, she does a double-take and pulls the man to a stop. He turns, too, but he’s already making that motion with his left hand again, pulling it in against his body. Harry stops beside them, knowing that if these people were enemies that he’d be dead already, and sticks his hand out. “Look, I don’t mean to bother you, but I was watching in there and I…” he pauses, wondering exactly what had compelled him to walk out after them. “I don’t know. I know you’re both wizards, but I’ve no idea who you are, and I—I want to know why that is.”

He is kind of expecting the man to take his hand, but he’s not sure quite why, because he’s turned into the woman, looking at him from the corners of his eyes, so it’s she that shakes Harry’s hand. “I’m Aife,” she says. “Aife MacNeil. This is my twin brother, Ciaran.”

That’s when it clicks, and Harry clicks his fingers to match. “You guys lit Fiendfyre in the Ministry. What was that—a year ago?” He remembers seeing their faces on the wanted posters, only in those pictures, Aife had been growling at the camera, and Ciaran had been laughing at his sister. The two had been seen lighting a Fiendfyre in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, but had managed to escape, and had landed themselves on the ever-growing list of Undesirables in the United Kingdom. They hadn’t been seen on the British Isles since.

“Ten months, actually,” Ciaran says, and that’s when he cracks his first smile. His stance finally becomes casual; he steps back from the protective way he’s turned into his sister, and he uncrosses his arms. A self-satisfied smirk flits across his face. “It took us six months to plan that one, but those bastards deserved every second of it.”

Harry snorts. “You guys didn’t go to Hogwarts, did you? You can’t be that much older than me, but I don’t remember you being there.”

“Our mum homeschooled us,” Aife explains. She shifts her weight from one foot to the other, towards her brother, who puts one hand around her shoulders, and she yawns.

Smirking again, Ciaran allows his sister to lean against him and pats her shoulder. “I’d best take this young one home,” he says, ignoring her when she grimaces and elbows him.

“Ah, right,” Harry agrees, and digs in his pocket for a spare bit of parchment. “Here, take my Floo address. I’m staying with my friends, and I think they’d be interested to meet you two.” He scribbles his address down using the tip of his wand and passes it over before taking a look around. “I think I’m going to skip the Apparition Point. There’s no one around.”

“Yeah, us too,” Ciaran says, holding his hand out for Harry to shake. “Good to meet you, mate.” He pushes the slip of paper into his pocket and clasps hands with his sister. “We’ll speak to you soon.”

Harry waits until they have blinked out of sight before taking one more glance around, palming his wand, and turning on the spot. He arrives just beside his bed, and, not bothering to undress, falls into it and a heavy sleep.


	3. Chapter 3

Harry hasn’t been asleep for nearly long enough when he wakes to pounding on his bedroom door. He grumbles something, trying rather unsuccessfully to untangle himself from his blankets and sit up. His glasses are not on his face, but he can tell from distinctly not-red blur that comes through his door that it’s Hermione, not Ron, who has woken him.

“What time is it?” he asks, finally getting one arm out from under the covers and feeling around on the mattress for his glasses.

“ _Accio_ glasses!” Hermione says, catches them, and passes them over. Harry slides them onto his face and looks up at her. “It’s six-thirty. I told you I’d be up at six, but you wouldn’t wake up, so I had to let you sleep a bit longer. How late were you out last night?”

He shrugs, pushing the blanket down his legs and getting up. “Not sure. I’ve got something to tell you, but first—coffee.” Scratching himself and ignoring Hermione’s grimace, he wanders past her, pausing in the doorway to toe off his socks before heading for the kitchen.

Ron is already there, hunched over a cup of coffee and looking distinctly grumpy that he is awake so early. He grunts at Harry, who grunts back, pours himself a mug of coffee as well, and slumps into the seat beside him.

The three fake Galleons sit on the table still, one tipped against another, shining too bright in the sunlight coming in through the window. Harry pokes at one of them until it drops flat onto the table with a clatter. Picking it up, he sips his coffee and leans closer to inspect the face. It looks exactly like every other Galleon he’s ever seen in his life, but then, Hermione’s Protean Charm had been designed to fade after a few hours. He puts the coin back down when she sits down across from him, biting into a green pear.

“So?” he asks, pushing the coins in her direction. “What do you think? Should we put out a call?”

Tracing the rim of one coin with her fingertip, she takes a long moment to answer. Finally, she draws a breath. “Yes,” she says. “I think we should. But carefully.”

“Well, duh,” Ron mutters. He takes another long drink of his coffee and gets up to get more. “Look, we send out a call for whoever to meet us somewhere, and then we Glamour ourselves before we show. It’s not as if we can ask people to meet us there and then not go. We’re going to have to take some risk.”

Hermione sighs. “Yes. I know.” Fidgeting in her seat, she bites into her pear. “Where shall we stage the meeting? I was thinking Paris—it’s got to be at some monument that people will recognize on the coin. The Eiffel Tower works well for that.”

“That feels too close,” Harry says. “I was thinking somewhere more like the Statue of Liberty. It’s far enough away, and nobody will mistake it.”

“I don’t think it much matters how far away from England we are. Nobody is cooperating with the British government, and even if we were arrested—which nobody would do, because we’d first have to commit a crime—no country will extradite us back to the UK. The Ministry has been ruled a dictatorship by the International Statute of Wizards.”

“Still,” Ron says, “that’s why we left Europe in the first place, isn’t it? Being that close to England gave us the willies. If it makes us more comfortable to be further away, why shouldn’t we be? I mean, what does it matter?”

Hermione rubs one hand over her face and shrugs. “Yeah. Alright. That’s fine, as long as we can find somewhere everyone’s going to recognize, even in miniature.”

“So, do we choose a tourist site? It will be crowded but maybe everyone would get lost better. I mean—it’s that, or we go for somewhere empty and hope that nobody’s watching.” Ron is beginning to look much more awake now that the coffee in his mug is dwindling.

“I think we should go for a tourist site. They’ll know where it is, and I think it’s safer if we hide everyone in the crowd; nobody can cause a scene in a public place,” Harry says. “I don’t want anyone getting hurt because we chose somewhere too deserted.”

“So, where? The Statue of Liberty? The Golden Gate Bridge, maybe? I mean—we could even do the Empire State Building; then we wouldn’t have to go too far.”

Shaking her head, Hermione uses her thumb to wipe up a drip from her pear. “I think that would be stupid. If someone did happen to see us, they would be too close to home.” She licks her thumb. “I think the Washington Monument is probably a good choice. It’s a tourist spot, but a lot of people head for the Reflecting Pool and the Lincoln Memorial first, so it won’t be so crowded that we won’t be able to find anyone.”

“Works for me,” Harry agrees, jerking his head at Ron, who nods and shrugs as if he doesn’t have much else to say. “When is this all going to happen? We don’t need too long to prepare, do we?”

The others exchange a glance, and Harry knows that they’ve picked up on his eagerness. He’s not entirely sure if it’s just about Ginny, because he’s quite looking forward to seeing Neville, too, and Seamus and Dean and Luna and everyone else. He really wants to go home, and any meeting with all of his old friends is one step closer to that goal. Especially where Neville is involved.

“Let’s take a couple of days, yeah? That will give us time to broadcast it a few times, and then we can properly work out our disguises. Let’s say Thursday.”

Harry and Ron watch as she takes out her wand, casts the Protean Charm on her coin and specifies what’s going to be broadcasted. The other two coins shine a little bit brighter for a moment, and Harry can feel the heat when he touches one. After several seconds, the heat fades, leaving the image of the Washington Monument and the words “Thursday, 12pm, code: lemon drop” upon the face.

For a few minutes, they sit in silence. Then, Hermione gets to her feet to dispose of her pear core. “Well, that’s that, I suppose,” she says as she sits down again. “Harry, you said you had something to tell us.”

“Oh, yeah.” Harry spins his mug on the table. “Remember those twins who lit a Fiendfyre at the Ministry last year?”

“The MacNeil twins.” Nodding, Hermione taps her fingernail against the edge of her Galleon. “Why?”

As Harry looks at her, he knows she’s not going to be impressed that he allowed his identity to be known. “I met them last night. They were at the bar I went to.”

“You shouldn’t have removed your Glamour,” Hermione sighs, but he can tell she’s beginning to resign herself to his recklessness. He just grins at her. “And?”

“And I gave them the Floo address. I think they’ll be willing to join Dumbledore’s Army, and I think they’d be really valuable. They’re powerful and fight well, and you don’t set Fiendfyre on people unless you really hate them.”

“Unless you’re Crabbe,” Ron mutters into his mug.

“Yeah, well, obviously it didn’t work out for him.” Harry rolls his eyes. “He was an idiot, though. I get the feeling the MacNeils are far smarter.” He presses his finger against the edge of a coin until it flips up onto its rim. “It sounds dumb now, I know. But…I have a good feeling about it.”

“Had you been drinking?” Hermione asks.

He frowns at her. “Not enough to make me stupid,” he snaps. “I know I have to be careful. I took a chance, alright? Isn’t that why we’ve de-magicked the living room? So if somebody comes through the Floo that we don’t want to be there, we have some chance of capturing them?” Taking a deep breath, he watches Hermione fiddle with a callous on Ron’s palm. “Look, yeah, I’d agree with you if it was someone like—someone like Barty Crouch. If they were neutral, I never would have said a word to them. But…it’s not as if they’re in New York for holidays. They’re exiles, too, for the same reason we are. What do they say—the enemy of my enemy is my friend?”

Hermione doesn’t speak, but Ron closes his fingers around hers and nods. “I trust your judgment, mate. If you think they can help us, then I want to meet them.”


	4. Chapter 4

“I know, Harry. You were right,” Hermione says. Behind her, Harry can see the Washington Monument drawing ever nearer. They had Apparated into the bathrooms at the Holocaust Museum, and were walking from there to the Monument. They’ve all Transfigured their appearances; Hermione’s gone blonde and tall, something like Fleur. Ron’s red hair has gone grey and he’s grown a mustache, and Harry himself could be Hermione’s brother.

“Stop calling me that,” he requests. “It’s Jack. And you’re Rebecca.”

“Yeah, fine,” she says. “You were right, _Jack_. I’m glad we met the MacNeil twins. And I think they’ll be useful. But you have to admit that it was stupid of you to show yourself.”

He rolls his eyes. “Yeah. Fine. Stupid. Do either of you want a cup of coffee? I’m going to grab one before we stake out the Monument.”

“Yeah, mate, I’ll take one,” Ron agrees. Hermione shakes her head, and he splits off from them. He watches as they head for the benches that are set up in a ring around the obelisk before turning toward the coffee stall a few hundred metres away.

*

Ron and Hermione are craning their necks to look at the top of the Monument when he returns to them. He passes Ron’s coffee with two sugars on, and then takes the seat beside him. “We’re still early,” he says. “It’s only quarter to twelve.”

“Yeah, but we don’t want to miss anyone,” Hermione replies. “Maybe we should split up. That way, if one of us is caught…”

“None of us is going to get caught.” But Ron is getting to his feet anyway. “I’ll go for a walk around the area. Let’s keep an eye on each other, though, in case we meet anyone.” Once Harry and Hermione nod, he steps back, joining the trickle of people walking around the Monument.

Hermione fidgets for a moment or two. “Maybe I will go get something to drink, after all,” she says, not looking at Harry but still up at the obelisk. “Then I’ll pick a different angle.” Getting up, she walks away. Harry doesn’t watch her go.

He sips his coffee, idly glancing up toward the top of the Monument. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Ron facing away from the Monument, looking out across the Reflecting Pool in the direction of the Lincoln Memorial. He looks like a fifty-something professor; one hand stuffed in the pocket of his slacks, wearing a sweater over his collared shirt. He is even rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet.

The coffee Harry’s drinking is rather vile, but he keeps on. He needs something to do with his hands so that he doesn’t continually rub at the wrist holster he’s wearing under his leather jacket. He doesn’t like wrist holsters, but it was that or cutting a hole in the pocket of his denims to get to a thigh holster, and that was just a bit too much work.

By the time he thinks to let his eyes fall to the crowd again, it’s been a few moments and he’s lost track of what he should be looking at. He can see both Ron and Hermione, Ron to his left, Hermione to his right, with the Washington Monument between them. He’s watching an old woman wander aimlessly ever nearer to the Reflecting Pool, wondering idly if she’s going to fall in, when, from the corner of his eye, he catches Ron starting to walk.

Slowly, trying not to draw attention to himself, he looks around. At first, he doesn’t see anything, and glances at Hermione to see that she’s watching too. But she hasn’t moved either, and he looks back at Ron, trying to figure out who he’s looking at.

He figures out who it is just moments before Ron reaches her. She is a small, rather plain-looking woman with black hair and a beauty mark on the left side of her jaw. And she’s eating lemon drops. As Ron walks closer to her, she smiles at him and holds out the box, and Ron puts out his hand so she can pour a couple into his palm.

Hermione hasn’t moved, so he stays put as well as Ron and the girl fall into conversation. Ron laughs loudly, and the girl grins just as Harry spots someone else eating lemon drops. This time, it’s a man with long blond dreadlocks, wearing a yellow Bob Marley t-shirt. Taking one last look in Hermione’s direction, he gets up and approaches the man, who seems too preoccupied with the Monument to be paying any attention to him.

He sits down beside the man and looks up at the obelisk as well. Tossing his dirt-water masquerading as coffee into the bin at the end of the bench, he pulls out the box of lemon drops he’s got in his pocket and opens it. “You like lemon drops, too?” he asks.

The man turns to him, eyes slightly narrowed. He has high cheekbones and blue eyes, and Harry thinks for a moment that if he was wearing furs, he would look just like a Viking. Grinning at the man, he shoves two or three sweets into his mouth. “Yeah,” the man finally says. “They’re hard to get, though, here in America.”

Wondering who he’s speaking to, Harry shrugs. “You just have to know where to go.” He can see Ron and the woman he’s with walking in their direction, and Hermione connecting with a purple-haired teenager who looks like she’s about three steps away from putting on a dog collar.

The six of them sit together on the bench, idly chatting about Washington, DC, and what they’d most like to see. Around half-twelve, their number has grown to eleven, and they decide that they ought to go for a walk.

They wander for several minutes, none of them knowing quite where to go, until soon enough they decide to stop for lunch. They find an Italian restaurant where the staff look particularly disinterested, push several tables together, and sit.

“Who wants to go change first?” Ron asks. “Ladies first, perhaps?”

The plain girl, Hermione, the girl with the purple hair, plus a tall witch with short blonde hair and a shapely black woman with a sultry smile all get up, and, linking arms, head for the bathrooms at the back of the restaurant. Harry looks around, trying to guess who’s left at the table with them. There are more people than he had been expecting, and he’s at a loss for who might have joined them.

The Viking-looking man suddenly snorts, and Harry looks up. Returning from the loo is Luna in the lead, followed by Hermione, Professor McGonagall, Ginny, and—Seamus, who is laughing at something McGonagall had said. A ripple of laughter moves across the table, and Seamus takes a short bow before sitting down again. But Harry can’t focus on him anymore, because Ginny has just taken the empty seat two seats down from him, and he just wants to look at her.

But then Ron elbows him. “Oi. Our turn,” he says, and reluctantly, Harry gets up too.

Once they have all entered the otherwise-empty men’s room, Viking-man pulls out a wand and taps it against the door handle. They all wait until the lock clicks before pulling out their own wands, and after just a few moments, Harry is looking around at Neville, Dean, Bill Weasley, and Draco Malfoy, who has already put his wand up in a defensive position as Harry stares at him in suspicious confusion. It matches the look on Ron’s face.

“Harry,” Neville says, moving to stand between Harry, Ron, and Malfoy. “He’s not like he used to be. Just—just put your wand down.”

Narrowing his eyes at the blond over Neville’s shoulder, he switches his wand to his left hand, thinking that, if he gets his aim right, he might have a better angle on Malfoy this way. “I will if he does,” he says. “What’s he doing here, anyway?”

He blinks in surprise when Malfoy swears and shoves his wand up his sleeve. After a moment, he does the same, and beside him Ron sighs and puts his wand away too. Neville steps back just as Malfoy sneers at Harry. “Looney brought me,” he says. “I’ve been living with her for the last few months.”

“Don’t call her that!” Harry snaps.

“Don’t bother trying to stop him,” Neville cuts in. “Luna doesn’t even mind it when he does it.”

“Excuse me, but what _the fuck_ is going on?”

Neville turns to Ron and gives him a sheepish grin. “You’ve missed a bit since you three have been away,” he says. “You know Draco’s been on the lam since the Battle.”

“I was living in Paris,” Draco interrupts. “I finished off my schooling at Beauxbatons and trained with Médecins Sans Frontières. I had heard about an underground school and I thought that would be my best bet to get back to Britain.”

Harry had heard rumours about the school. They all knew that many of the teachers from Hogwarts had been on the run from Umbridge’s tyrannous rule, and there had been whispers ever since that a school had been opened for the Muggleborns who were no longer allowed to attend Hogwarts. “And everyone just—just trusts him?” he asks.

“We didn’t right away,” says Bill. The scars on his face are no longer quite so red. He looks at Draco. “We made him take Veritaserum. He’s telling the truth—he really is a Healer. He’s been working for the school for the last six months, and he’s been invaluable.”

“Looney was the first one to give me a chance,” Malfoy says. He straightens his back and lifts his chin, but he’s not sneering.

Neville smirks at Harry. “Does that surprise you?” he asks, and laughs.

“Look, as much as I’d love to stand in a water closet being interrogated all afternoon, I think we ought to get back out to the ladies,” Malfoy says. “They’ll be starting to wonder if we’ve all drowned in a toilet, soon.”

Dean, who had been the dreadlocked Viking man, unlocks the door once more and leads the way out, followed by Bill, Ron, Malfoy, Neville, and finally Harry. He’s not quite sure he’s ready to blindly trust Malfoy yet, and as he tags along at the end of the line, Harry watches the blond take his seat on one side of Luna. Neville sits on her other side, and Harry would have kept watching if not for his sudden armful of redhead.

“Ginny,” he manages before her arms squeeze the rest of the air out of his lungs. She looks up at him and grins, and he’s about to kiss her when Ron clears his throat as loudly as possible.

“I missed you,” she whispers in his ear, and lets go of him before he has a chance to answer. He watches her sit back down, and stands there, dumbstruck, for a moment before Hermione says his name and points him into the last seat at the table. She snorts when he trips over his shoe on his way over, and he collapses into the seat, blushing madly, wondering if anyone would notice if he sunk under the table. He thinks they probably would, so he doesn’t bother. But he can feel Ginny’s foot against his, and he allows himself to be comforted by that.


	5. Chapter 5

Harry is antsy. He’s been this way for days, ever since the event at the Washington Monument. He misses Ginny; he misses the twins; he misses Hogwarts; he misses England. It doesn’t help that he’s been spending plenty of time with the MacNeil twins, who have a healthy taste for the rebellious and who have been encouraging his wild propositions for how to get home undetected. But even he knows none of them will fly.

It doesn’t much matter, though. He can’t take his mind off of home. After the few kisses he and Ginny had stolen before she’d Apparated back, he had thought that his dreams would be focussed exclusively on her. And they had been, for a night. Since then, he’s been dreaming about all sorts of things: burning down the Ministry; returning not in secret but publicly, triumphantly; putting his hands around that fat little neck and strangling Umbridge himself. But it’s not all revolutionary stuff. He has also been dreaming about having a pint with his friends without having to wear Glamours and helping Molly with the garden at the Burrow. He really just wants to go _home_.

With this has admittedly come a renewed fervor in their cause. In the middle of the night, he wakes up and writes ideas on a notepad he’s taken to keeping beside his bed. In the morning, these ideas don’t make any sense. Two nights ago he had written ‘yardstick sabotage’ and had puzzled over its meaning for several hours before Hermione had made him throw out the slip of paper. He still doesn’t know what he had meant by it.

But it’s becoming more and more clear that they can’t keep going on this way. They need to figure out a way to mobilise anyone in Britain who might be willing to help, and the longer they wait the weaker those people’s resolve will be. Even Hermione is beginning to realise it, though up until this moment she has been most vocal about staying hidden.

All of this is why they have been holed up in the apartment for four days, subsisting on take-away Chinese food and beer. The MacNeil twins have been in and out, alternating between brainstorming and going home to sleep.

They are all exhausted, and none of them has had a single solid idea.

*

Finally, well into their eighth day, Ciaran just throws his hands up. Or down, more realistically, as he is lying upside down on his chair, legs thrown over the back, head hanging over the front. His curly dark hair is standing on end.

“What if we just show up in London, guns blazing, and take the Ministry by force?” he asks. He has an affinity for old-timey American western films, according to Aife, and has picked up several idioms.

“Because the moment we do that, nobody else is going to trust us,” Ron snaps. “We have to make sure everyone knows we’re coming.” Unsurprisingly, Ron has not taken to Ciaran, who, upon meeting Hermione, had given her a roguish grin and kissed her hand. Although she had rolled her eyes and extracted her hand with a polite 'nice to meet you,' Ron had growled and refused to look Ciaran in the eye.

Harry, ignoring Ron’s tone, picks at the label on his empty beer bottle. “We haven’t got enough manpower to go in there alone. Even with all of Dumbledore’s Army, we’d need more. So we’ve got to let people know we’re coming. We’ll need their help.”

“Not to mention that taking the Ministry by force when the entire country is in the dark is basically exactly what Umbridge did. It’s one thing to take the Ministry by force, but we can’t do it if nobody knows what’s happening.” Aife finishes off her beer, her feet propped on her brother’s chest. When he grimaces at her, she shrugs. “It’s true. I’m all for a violent and preferably bloody coup, but not until people know what’s going to happen.”

Tapping his sister’s feet so she moved them, Ciaran throws his legs forward so he can roll off the chair. “Fine. Fine. So, how do we get the information out?”

Hermione draws breath as if she’s about to say something, then hums thoughtfully. Glancing at Harry, her eyebrows crease momentarily. “We…could start by contacting the DA,” she says, her voice quiet.

“How do you do that?” Ciaran asks. His wand flips back and forth between his fingers. A coin clatters across the table, and the Scot picks it up. “Right. You’ve been paying people off. Somehow, I guess I’m not surprised.” He lets out a long sigh and looks over at his twin. “I don’t think we’re going to be able to help you guys.”

“No, wait,” Harry says. “That’s not what it is.” Aife turns back even as Ciaran continues toward the fire. She gives Harry a nod to continue, so he picks up the Galleon. “When we were in school, we—Hermione—enchanted a set of coins to match one another when we change one. We used to use them for meetings, back when Dumbledore’s Army met at Hogwarts. And we used them when we got everyone back together last week.”

By the fireplace, Ciaran wipes the last of the Floo powder from his fingertips. “Alright. Dumbledore’s Army knows you’re coming in. They’ve gone and told—who? Their Muggleborn students? There can’t be enough of them to help.”

“You really don’t think any of them have kept in contact with anyone? Hogwarts is the one thing that has united almost any witch or wizard older than fourteen in all of Britain. Present company excluded, of course. Word will get out.”

Ciaran fidgets, looking between Ron and Harry. “And _then_ we’ll get to stage a coup?” he asks. “A bloody one?”

“We can’t promise blood,” Harry replies, stifling his grin because he knows Hermione is looking at him, “but we’ll do our best with the coup. We all know it’s what needs to happen.”


	6. Chapter 6

_McG. Thursday noon. Lemon drops. Muir Woods._

Harry tries to slow down on his box of lemon drops; if he doesn’t, he’s afraid he’ll run out before McGonagall finds him. But this is the first thing he’s eaten all day—stupidly—and he’s starving. He’s sitting on a damp bench near the entrance to the Muir Woods National Park, his bright green hair standing straight out from his head, wondering why everything here is always so damn wet, watching a group of German tourists stand directly in front of the map while sorting their waist packs.

He’s come alone on this mission; Hermione has caught some sort of flu, so Ron is back at their flat in New York City with her. It was probably not the smartest decision, just in case, but Ron also still doesn’t trust the MacNeils and anyway, Harry didn’t want them to come along. Neither of them knows McGonagall, and he feels like it would just be awkward. Plus, Ciaran’s penchant for violence probably won’t go over fabulously well with McGonagall.

A young Asian woman who looks remarkably like Cho Chang wanders toward him. She takes the seat beside him, and he’s waiting for her to pull a box of lemon drops out of her enormous purse when she starts yammering at him about the Germans. “I’m just saying,” she says in a loud, very obviously Floridian accent, “they could be standing somewhere else.” He stops looking at her. She’s obviously not his former Transfiguration professor. She slides closer, hovers her hand over his knee, and it suddenly occurs to him that she’s flirting with him. He tries doubly hard to ignore her. It doesn’t work.

Just as she leans over, making an obscene suggestion right under his earlobe, another girl, tall and dark-haired and sort of commanding-looking, marches up, out through the gates. “There you are, darling,” she cries. “You walk too fast!” She drops into the seat beside him, and he looks from her to the Asian girl, bewildered. “My, it’s lucky I brought my own lemon drops, isn’t it?” she says, peeking into his box. “You didn’t save me any of yours.” She whips off her backpack and pulls a yellow box from one of the netted water bottle pockets.

The Asian girl gets to her feet, un-self-consciously walking away, elbowing her way in between the Germans to look at the map. Harry continues to stare at the tall girl. “Mc…Professor?”

“That is correct, Mister Potter,” she replies. Her arm unhooks from his and she stands up briskly. “Shall we? I believe you said something about returning to the city for this little meeting.”

Harry gets up too, holding his arm out to her. They meander away toward the parking lot, turning a corner onto a deserted part of the path. “Ready?” he asks. She nods, and he Apparates them back to New York.

*

Ron appears as Harry ushers Professor McGonagall into the flat. The door to his and Hermione’s bedroom is shut. “She’s still feeling off,” he says as they walk into the kitchen. McGonagall drops her Glamour, pulling her backpack off and setting it beside her chair as she sits. “Can I get you anything to drink?”

“A glass of water, please, Mister Weasley,” she replies. Once the three of them are seated, McGonagall with water, the two men with beers, because here on the east coast it’s already three in the afternoon, and the hell with it, Harry Summons the crate of notes—many of them crumpled up and scrapped—that they’ve been tossing every idea into.

“Not to put too fine a point on it, but—it’s time to take back England,” he says. McGonagall nods but doesn’t say anything. “We think it’s going to be violent. It doesn’t seem possible otherwise.”

Again, McGonagall nods. “I can see why you might think that,” she replies. “I’m not sure I see an alternative, either. I don’t believe that Dolores Umbridge will give up her grip on the Ministry without being torn from it by force.”

“Right. Well. We’ve been thinking that if we just—you know—storm in and take the Ministry back, nobody will know what’s going on. It will be just like what she did.”  
“Not to mention, there aren’t nearly enough members of Dumbledore’s Army to take over,” Ron continues. “We need more people on our side.”

“So, what do you need from me?” McGonagall asks.

Harry shakes his head, sinking his hand into the box and rummaging around a bit. A few wads of paper fall out, but when he pulls his hand out, it’s empty. “Honestly, we could use any help you can give us. First of all, we have yet to figure out any plan that might fly, partly because we have no idea of what the Ministry’s security systems look like now. So, we’ll need people doing some sort of—I don’t know—reconnaissance. And…well…” He looks sideways at Ron, who looks back with a sort of regretful smirk.

“We were thinking that some of the most creative people are still back in Britain,” Ron continues. “You know—Fred and George always have some sort of harebrained scheme that somehow works. We’re at our wits’ ends here, and we were hoping to get a few new pairs of eyes on everything. Maybe someone else will be able to think of a plan that we haven’t.”

When the former Headmistress looks between them, the curve of her mouth not quite convinced, Harry fidgets in his seat. “We’d also need you to start networking. We need a…a propaganda machine, almost. But not. People know that Umbridge’s Ministry is horrible, but they don’t really seem ready to do something about it. We need to get people going,” he says. “We would need your help with that—I mean, we can try and network the people who have left England, but it seems like a bad idea for us to risk coming back home until everything’s ready.”

“Will you three be able to network with everyone who’s not in Britain anymore?” she asks. “Those coin things seem to work well.”

“Mostly, yeah,” Harry says. “Some people don’t have them, like Molly and Arthur. But I think Bill’s been in contact with them since they left. The biggest problem will be those teachers who aren’t in Belfast.”

McGonagall smirks. “Luckily, most of them are. Kingsley comes in and out; I’ll see if I can’t get a hold of him. And Pomona Sprout was in Atlanta last time I checked. I’ll contact her as well.” She drains her glass of water. “Is there anyone else you can think of that you’ll need help contacting?”

Harry looks at Ron; Ron looks back at him, his lip curled up in an I-can’t-think-of-anyone-else gesture. “Yeah, no, I don’t think there’s anyone else,” Harry agrees, “but I’ll contact you—or, I don’t know, Luna or Neville or someone with a coin—if we can think of anyone. Hermione might be able to remember someone we’ve forgotten.”

McGonagall nods. “Someone will meet you at the CN Tower in Toronto next week. Thursday, say, at noon. Hopefully we’ll have a plan by then.”


End file.
